Microsoft recently launched Office 365 - the internet version or the cloud-computing version of their popular office application suite "Microsoft Office" and is trying really hard to give a tough competition to companies like Google who have already been in the Could based Office Suite business (Google Apps) for quite a long time now.

Now, we have been hearing that Microsoft recently paid a hefty sum of US $ 250,000 to the authorities of University of Nebraska in order to switch to Office 365 and move all the university's e-mail communication systems with Microsoft. Currently, the University of Nebraska is using IBM's Lotus Notes for all their office applications and e-mail needs.

Microsoft Office 365

Not only this, Microsoft is being said to have provided free subscriptions of Office 365 email and cloud storage services to the students, faculty of over 15,000 and staff of the University of Nebraska.

Related:Read more about the recent developments in the field of Cloud Computing.

Although Microsoft has declined to comment about both the $250,000 paid to U. Nebraska and the free licenses, but the university says the amount falls under business incentive funds and will be used to avail consulting services, support services and deployment help (the switch from IBM Lotus Notes to Office 365) from Microsoft.

The university of Nebraska has four campuses and the entire system will welcome the new Exchange email service and Lync instant messaging (as a part of the switch to Cloud 365) starting from later this year this. However, only the Medical Centers in the university campuses won't switch to Cloud 365 as using cloud based products violate privacy according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

However, the university had also considered the similar services offered by others such as Google, Dell and IBM but decided to go with Microsoft because of their good offer (the $250,000 and free licenses) and also the cheaper running cost of Office 365 ($6 per user per year) as compared to Google's offering of their cloud services starting at $50 per user per year.